


Annie's Story

by Sarai



Series: Stars from Home [13]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: Ororo, Scott, and Jean have begun training as X-Men.Alex's days with the X-Men are behind him.And then there's Annie Summers, too young to know yet if the X-Men might be an option in her future. She's just trying to get through the day, keep out of trouble, and make Grandpa Alex smile again.





	1. Instinct

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WaterSoter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaterSoter/gifts).



> This was not originally planned to be part of the series, but I was asked and that got me thinking, and really, there's only one possible outcome of thinking.

“Hey Jean.”  
  
She glanced up from her packing. There wasn’t much in her bag: her pajamas and toiletries, a couple of textbooks for next semester. Her was laptop on her desk, zipped into a padded sleeve.   
  
Jean was headed home in a couple of hours to spend the holidays with her family, but it was hard to know what to pack. She still had clothes at home. Maybe some of her favorites… so she was glad for Scott to show up and distract her.   
  
Of course, she was glad to see him for other reasons as well.  
  
“Hey! Come in.”  
  
“You getting ready to head home?”  
  
“Yeah. It’ll be—good. I mean, weird, but—but good.”  
  
Scott nodded, though Jean knew he couldn’t really relate. She didn’t know how to discuss family with him. So far he had been understanding, but how could she complain about her parents to someone who didn’t have any?  
  
Which wasn’t why he was here.  
  
Or why she wanted him here.  
  
“We should really make the most of this time,” Jean said.  
  
“We should,” Scott agreed.  
  
She was not a subtle person and moved into kissing him. She had over the past few months that he wouldn’t make the first move with any haste. Better that she should. One thing he would do was reciprocate.  
  
Jean felt her brain flooding, falling back and letting her body take over, and she knew—from her telepathy and his hands—that Scott was feeling the same. She fumbled to unbutton his jeans—  
  
“You guys are gross.”  
  
They leapt apart. Jean turned to fix the buttons on her shirt.  
  
“Hey, Ororo,” Scott said, a little breathless. “What’s up?”  
  
“Besides—”  
  
“Yes besides that!”  
  
“Ororo, come on,” Jean said. Her shirt was fixed and she turned to face her friend.  
  
Ororo raised her eyebrows. “Right. I was the one breaking rules. I’m getting a Super Soaker for Christmas.”  
  
“You’re such a brat!”  
  
“I’m going to give you some time to say goodbye, but behave, okay?”  
  
Jean and Scott both nodded.  
  
Neither liked it, but they knew Ororo was right. Scott and Jean were not allowed to have sex until they were eighteen, keeping more than carefully within the law because he was in foster care. Professor Xavier had been clear: he would not blame either of them, but if it happened, Jean would go back to her parents’ place.  
  
“I’ll miss you,” he said.  
  
“We can Skype.”  
  
He stepped forward and kissed her gently. “Merry Christmas, Jean.”  
 

* * *

  
   
They had taken their finals that morning, which left a sense of wrung-out tiredness in Ororo and Scott. Neither of them felt completely up to… anything. After Jean left, the day consisted of wandering and hanging out.  
   
“Professor, I know usually we don’t do this,” Scott began, “but Ororo and I were wondering if, just for today—”  
  
“Can we eat in the kitchen?” Ororo asked. Aside, she added, “You weren’t getting there.”  
  
“I was getting there,” Scott retorted.  
  
Ororo gave him a look.  
  
Professor Xavier agreed, “I suppose it would be all right for one night.”  
  
When someone knocked the door, they knew it was the takeout. Professor Xavier gave Scott a meaningful look; Scott sighed, took the cash, and went to answer the door. Anyone could have done it, but not everyone was the shy. Scott did much better with new people than he used to, but Professor Xavier still made him practice whenever someone needed to be talked with.  
  
He returned and set a paper bag on the table, along with change.  
  
Only once food had been portioned out did Professor Xavier ask, “How were finals?”  
  
They hadn’t been up for talking about it earlier.  
  
“Okay,” Ororo said.  
  
“I don’t know,” Scott said.  
  
“You don’t know?” Ororo asked.  
  
“I’ll know when grades come out. But,” he added, glancing at Professor Xavier, “you don’t need to worry.”  
  
“As long as you did your best.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“Me too,” Ororo said. “Bet I did better than you.”

  
“Bet you didn’t.”  
  
“Did so!”  
  
“Did not!”  
  
Ororo balled up a paper napkin and chucked it at Scott, who retaliated in kind.   
  
Once they had stopped laughing, Ororo asked, “Can we make a cake when grades come out?”  
  
“I see no reason why you shouldn’t.”  
  
“Chocolate cake?” Scott asked.  
  
“Chocolate cake, yes!” Ororo cried, and Scott and Professor Xavier laughed. Her long and determined quest for chocolate cake had been a staple of their lives for years.  
  
A ring tone interrupted. Scott didn’t look at his phone: “That’s Alex’s ring, may I be excused?”  
  
Nothing could have sucked the mirth from the room faster than those words. Alex’s wife had passed away a few months ago. Although he was managing as best he could, Scott had done everything possible to be there. Even when he couldn’t, physically, literally, be there.  
  
Professor Xavier nodded. “Of course.”  
  
Scott left the table, taking his phone from his pocket. After months, it was a smooth motion.  
  
“Hey, Alex,” he said as he slipped out the front door. It wasn’t that Scott didn’t trust Professor Xavier and Ororo. He just thought Alex deserved privacy.  
  
“It’s me.”  
  
“Daisy?”  
  
“Annie.”  
  
“Is everything okay?” Scott asked. She sounded less than okay.  
  
It was raining out. He sat against the side of the mansion, under the porch roof. He huddled tight to keep the cold out.  
  
“Nothing is okay,” she replied, and he heard her crying between the words.  
  
“I know. I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”  
  
She didn’t say anything for a while. She just sniffled and hiccuped.  
  
“Alex and your mom told me a little about Nurse Annie. I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet her.”  
  
“Yeah, Grandma was great. It’s not that.”  
  
“It’s not?”  
  
“No… I miss her a lot, I miss her all the time, but… Grandpa’s told me about you. He always told me how selfless you were. You’d do what other people needed, even if they hated you for it. He admires you.”  
  
Scott didn’t know how to answer that. He had always thought he was Alex’s annoying little brother. Alex never seemed like he disliked Scott, not once they got used to each other. The idea that Alex admired him had never occurred, though. Scott felt himself tearing up a little at the thought.  
  
He wasn’t the only one. Annie sobbed loudly. Then all she was doing was crying, and Scott was starting to worry.  
  
“Annie, where are you right now?”  
  
“I—I…”  
  
“Can you go get someone? Your mom or—”  
  
“No!” she interrupted. “No, I can’t, that’s the problem, I can’t… I can’t talk to anybody! I can’t talk to anybody about this and we’re all just… not talking… and I don’t know what to do, I can’t keep doing this and it’s Christmas and… and I don’t know what to do… and Grandpa says you always did the right thing so what would you do?”  
  
Scott tilted his head back. The feeling of wanting to cry was quite different now. He wasn’t close with Annie, but she was family and she was suffering. There was nothing he could do to get to her. She lived in Massachusetts. He had already begged once to go out of state to visit family immediately, and even if he could leave, she was hours away.  
  
“Annie, please get Alex.”  
  
“No!”  
  
He wouldn’t have done it, either.  
  
“Where are you?”  
  
“In the garage.”  
  
“Will you just promise me you’ll stay home tonight?”  
  
“Yeah. Sure.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“I miss Grandma,” Annie said, “but it’s not about that. Mom’s so miserable here. I know what she wants, but… how do you do it? What would you do?”  
  
He thought about it for a moment. Scott had acted on instinct often. Luck, he supposed. He was lucky his instinct were good.  
  
He thought about the day he, Ororo, Laurie, and Doug had been attacked. It was the first time he had done something big; useless as he had been against the machine attacking them, he had gone to Ororo because she was scared.  
  
When the Brotherhood attacked, he had refused to hide in the bomb shelter where it was safe.

But those were not things he thought about, just things he did because he had to do them.  
   
He had done stupid things, too, but when the stakes were high there was never any choice but to protect his family.  
  
“You have to figure out what the people you love need the most.”


	2. Windows

  
Annie was supposed to wake up now. She knew from the light through her eyelids even without opening them. It was into the morning already.  
  
She pulled the covers over her head and pulled her knees close. When she was small, she hid that way—not from monsters, not from anything in particular. The covers sealed out the encroaching reality.  
  
If anyone asked, she was in here now because the air outside here was cold.  
  
Lots of things outside here were cold.   
  
And nobody was going to ask.  
  
Under the covers, Annie tracked the other people in the house. She heard her grandpa downstairs. Nobody seemed like themselves anymore, but Grandpa was closest. He got out of bed every day. He did things. Went out. But he seemed empty and he didn’t smile anymore. He was like a compelling alien pretending to be her grandpa.  
  
Or a shapeshifter. Grandpa claimed to know one of those, although the veracity of said claim was dubious if you asked Annie.   
  
Since they came to live with Annie’s grandparents, Mom slept in her old bedroom from when she was a teenager. Annie slept in what used to be Uncle Scott’s bedroom. Maybe he had hidden under the covers, too. Probably not, but maybe. But he had definitely been able to hear his sister when she was in her room. She wasn’t right now.  
  
Annie’s muscles started to cramp after fifteen minutes of hiding. She moved just enough to ease the pain. It returned all too quickly, though, and an ache began to grow in her abdomen.   
  
She groaned in protest, but there was no fighting it.   
  
There had been another reason for Annie to spend as long as possible huddled under the covers, one that grabbed her in a giant icy fist the moment she threw off her protective layers.

  
“Cold-cold-cold-cold-cold,” she muttered, running to the bathroom, then, “Oh, monkey nuts!” as her butt hit the almost-frozen toilet seat. December was a sucky time to pee in New England.  
  
She washed her hands and face, and pulled a brush through the spiky mess of hair on her head. It was past her shoulders now and prone to looking electrified after a good night’s sleep. In the summer, she would run a wet comb through it—but not in this cold!  
  
She shivered back to her room for pants retrieval and traded her jammies shirt for a sweatshirt. Staying in her room was still an option. The bed looked so inviting…  
  
Annie looked away. Instead of hiding back under the covers, she pulled out a box from under the bed and flipped open the lid. Inside was a photo cube, warm socks with polka-dots, a water pistol, and two novels—well, four novels in two volumes. She didn’t know why she was looking; she knew what was there. Her Christmas shopping did not look impressive. She had taken a bunch of old photos to be digitized and uploaded them to a photo cube. That and the socks were for Grandpa. The books were for Scott, though she wasn’t sure he would like them. Grandpa said he would read anything and to pick books she liked, but the more she talked to him the less she thought Tamora Pierce was his wavelength.  
  
The water pistol was for Ororo. They were going to visit Uncle Charles for New Year’s, and apparently (Grandpa wasn’t sure why) Ororo was crazy about water pistols. And hey, when Annie was given $20 and told to get something good and you can keep the change, she would get something good!  
  
She still did not have anything for her mom. That was a… work in progress.  
  
She closed the box and pushed it back under her bed. By now her stomach was rumbling at the prospect of breakfast… maybe brunch by now… but she detoured. Instead of heading straight down to the kitchen, she went into her mother’s bedroom.  
  
Annie laid down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Her mom had painted the night sky there, the Crux and Mensa. She had painted on the walls, too, images of windows in various shapes and sizes, showing cities all over the world. How talented, how hopeful her mother had been. She was still talented today, but…  
  
Downstairs, a door opened. Annie threw herself off the bed and bolted out of the room, back to her bedroom. She heard voices downstairs, her mom and Grandpa arguing, and put her hands over her ears.  
  
“Goddammit you two,” she grumbled.  
  
Only after her mom had shut herself in her bedroom again did Annie head downstairs.  
  
“Hey, Grandpa.”  
  
He was at the kitchen table, reading one of his old geology books.  
  
“Gettin’ ready for work?” Annie asked.  
  
He looked up. “Er—yes. Reviewing.”  
  
“That’s cool,” she said, peering into the fridge. Grandpa was in some ways a cliche bachelor. He didn’t know how to cook anything. They had condiments and soda. The neighbors brought by casseroles after Grandma died, but those were long since eaten.  
  
Annie glanced at her grandfather. The past few months had been hard on all of them, but she honestly didn’t know how he made it through sane. At least she had school and her mom had done that mural project at the rec center. Grandpa was retired. All he had was time to sit and remember Grandma.  
  
Annie closed the fridge. Nothing there. She checked the cupboard and found some popcorn bags, pretzels (probably stale), and a box of brown sugar.  
  
None of them baked, so the box was left alone.  
  
No, she had used it for a hiding place because she didn’t totally trust him not to search her room. He had done it last month when she was caught smoking pot behind the shop classroom at school. So she used the brown sugar box to hide the macaroni and cheese.   
  
“Wanna share this?” she offered.  
  
He looked up from his book again, first looking tired, then surprised. “Why do we have that?”  
  
“It tastes good. Share?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
They had it because Scott said it would make Alex happy.  
  
Annie boiled the macaroni, then stirred in the milk, butter, and cheese powder. She knew it was just a bunch of chemicals, but she didn’t exactly _dislike_ Kraft. It wasn’t her favorite, but it was pretty good.  
  
She brought two bowls to the table and put one in front of Grandpa.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“No problem.”  
  
She knew he meant it, but he still looked grim.  
  
“Do you want to play cards later?” she asked.  
  
“Okay. Sure. It’s been a while since you lost to me at gin.”  
  
That had always seemed like a weird name for a card game her alcoholic grandfather would play. Once Annie had suggested that after years of sobriety he found a way to get his gin. It was before Grandma died, so it was funny. The problem was, back then, Grandpa had take care of Annie.   
  
She tried to take care of him now but didn’t do a very good job. He had always been able to make her smile. But while Grandpa was funny and Mom was an artist, Annie was just… Annie.  
  
“Is this all we have to eat?” he asked.  
  
She nodded.   
  
“Let’s go to the market today.”  
  
Annie nodded again. It wasn’t like she had never borrowed her mom’s credit card before, but she liked that Grandpa volunteered to go. Annie sucked at being a grown-up. Someone needed to do it right.


	3. Marketing

“Why did you never learn to cook?” Annie asked. She pushed the cart ahead of her, but the market was big and a bit overwhelming. The truth was that she hadn’t learned to cook very much, either. Mom did, sometimes, but mostly she and Annie lived on snack food and takeout.   
  
“Never needed to,” her grandpa said. “I should now, but…”  
  
“But you’re not going to?”  
  
“Back when I was your age, you could buy real food at the markets. This is…” He regarded the item in his hand, a bag of potato chips. “This is plywood potatoes.”  
  
He tossed it into the cart, anyway.  
  
“Why do you like mac and cheese?”  
  
“Because mac and cheese is delicious, what’s wrong with you?”  
  
Annie shrugged.  
  
“You ever eat dinner at a friend’s house?”  
  
She nodded. Her mom only moved them back to live with Grandma and Grandpa earlier that year. Before then, Annie had a small group of close friends.  
  
“What’s it like?”  
  
“It depends on the friend. Emily’s parents are vegans, so they eat like… beans and stuff. Kale. That stuff. Sunny’s family is Indian. Mara’s dad is _super_ into grilling.”  
  
“Feel normal?”  
  
“Once you get used to it. I mean, not at first, things were really different at their homes. I got used to it and then it was really nice to be there.”  
  
“Well, that’s why I like Kraft. After my parents died,” Grandpa said, like it was normal, and Annie was so surprised she stopped walking for a moment. He carried on and she hurried to catch up, “I was separated from my brother and sent to live with a new family. Everything was different. Imagine going to a stranger’s house, having all the customs and expectations different. Something so generic would have been comforting.”  
  
Annie knew her grandpa talked about these things. Her mom didn’t. When people were lost, when bad things happened, Annie’s mom said they had to move on. She said they remembered the past but lived in the present.  
  
Annie used to think that was wise, but since living with Grandma and Grandpa she wasn’t so sure.  
  
Several years ago, when Annie was a little kid, her uncle passed away. Her mom never talked about it. Annie only asked once, and it was clear she wasn’t to ask again. Grandpa talked about him, though, and he was Annie’s family, too. Her grandpa had lost lots of people from the time he was a little boy. He wasn’t happy, she knew that, but he was carrying on.  
  
“Why didn’t they keep you and Scott together?” she asked.  
  
“Family didn’t want two,” Grandpa said, “and Scott was too old. He remembered too much. He knew who he was, but I was only three. After a while, I forgot I had ever been a Summers. Scott never would have let that happen.”  
  
She tried to imagine what that would be like. Annie was a Summers, too, and she couldn’t imagine forgetting—but she had forgotten some things. Like her uncle. She forgot a lot about her Scott, just like Grandpa forgot his.  
  
“Toaster Streudel?” she suggested.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Annie tossed the box into the cart. “Did you get Mom a Christmas present? Or is it like, she lives with you, I mean we live with you, and that’s kind of it?”  
  
“Are you asking if I got something for your mom or if I got something for you?”  
  
“Mom. ‘Cause I don’t have anything for her yet.”  
  
“I got her canvases and charcoal pencils. We can put both our names on them if you want. It’s going to be a lot of this sort of thing, frozen food for a while, but maybe we can do something for Christmas, like… uh…”  
  
“Chinese food?”  
  
They came to the end of the aisle. Junk was on the shelves, but at the back was meat. Well, there had been meat in the aisle, but it was jerky. This was raw. It was actual animal pieces, chicken and steak and pre-made hamburger patties.   
  
“Like Chinese food. Yes. Or I could cook something.”  
  
“You can’t cook, Grandpa.”  
  
He gave her a sideways look. “You remember that time you stayed with me and Grandma when you were seven, I cooked you eggs.”  
  
“You had to soak the pan for like three days.”  
  
“I had to soak the pan because…?”  
  
“Because it had all that black stuff burnt onto the bottom!”  
  
“What black stuff?”  
  
“Burnt eggs.”  
  
“Which were burnt by me.”  
  
“That’s not cooking! That’s burning!”  
  
“Over- _cooking_ ,” Grandpa said, waving off her objection like turning eggs into charcoal counted as cooking.   
  
Neither of them had the ability to cook, so they walked past the meat and into frozen food. It did make for a rather depressing prospect for Christmas dinner, Annie thought, but there was no chance of this Christmas being a happy one anyway. Not without Grandma.  
  
As they picked out things they could make easily—and which Grandpa said were ‘not going to kill us’ with all the additives—Annie reflected, “I should be better at this. That’s how it is in books, right? Only child of a single mother with an… artistic temperament… learns to take care of them both.”  
  
“Maybe it’s because you don’t have a brother,” Grandpa suggested.  
  
Annie didn’t follow.  
  
“You know I have a brother who’s responsible. He’s been learning to cook. Your uncle Scott, he was always dedicated. He planned things, saw ‘em through. Me, Daisy, you, we’re not like that. We’re all instinct. It’s not a bad thing. We just get a little bored in the day-to-day.”  
  
Which, she thought, made sense. Her mom was an artist not only because she was talented, but because the world wasn’t enough for her and she had to add to it. Her grandpa had been a superhero, a soldier, and a scientist.  
  
It reminded her that there was more than restlessness to Summers blood.  
  
“Hey Grandpa? Do you think I’m gonna be, you know, like you and Uncle Scott? And Other Scott? Jeez, that’s a Y-chromosome thing, isn’t it?” she realized. It was all the boys who had mutations. Her mother was a human.  
  
“You want to know for sure?” Grandpa asked.  
  
“There’s a way to check?” Annie asked. “Is it, like, a blood test?”  
  
She wondered for a moment. She was curious as to whether or not it was reliable. And could that get you into trouble? Mutation was an open topic in her family, but not everyone accepted mutants. She had heard Grandpa talking about it with Scott. Annie wasn’t invited to those conversations, but when enough people stopped talking to you, it wasn’t eavesdropping. It was necessary.   
  
Maybe it would be worth knowing in advance that she was a mutant, but it wouldn’t be worth it for other people to know.  
  
“It’s not a blood test, we can ask Uncle Charles.”  
  
“He’s not my uncle.”  
  
“The answer to your question, by the way, is yes, he can mostly tell. Sometimes he can be wrong before manifestation.”  
  
“I don’t want to know.”  
  
Because what if she wasn’t?  
  
It was cold out and the wind made it vicious, so the conversation was on hold until they were in the car. Only then did Annie broach the subject that had really been on her mind. Mutation and food were important, yes, but so was this.  
  
“Hey, Grandpa, you going back to work… is that… is that because of me and Mom?”  
  
He gave her a strange look, then turned his attention back to the road. “You mean to get away from you two, no.”  
  
“We moved in with you because she couldn’t support us anymore…”  
  
“It’s not about the money, Annie. Even if it was, that wouldn’t be your concern, okay? You’re thirteen. It’s not your job to take care of me and Mom.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“It’s about Grandma. I need a distraction from missing her.”  
 


	4. Something Especially Profane

  
Annie waited until the dryer buzzed to announce the laundry was dry and her grandpa started folding. Then she crept downstairs and booted up the computer. There was only one in the house. It was a clunky old desktop, but at this point she was just relieved it had wireless.

Besides, Grandpa’s technological illiteracy made secret browsing super easy. She just re-installed Opera every time she wanted to look at something without anyone knowing. She glanced over her shoulder just in case. No one was there; Grandpa was upstairs and Mom wasn’t home.

It was almost Christmas. They even had a tree, although it wasn’t decorated yet and had some broken and smooshed branches from when Annie dropped it trying to carry it inside. She suspected there would have been even brokener and smoosheder branches, but one of the neighbors came over to help.

Almost Christmas and Annie still did not have a present for Mom.

She looked at the search bar for a few seconds before typing in what she wanted.

She didn’t have much money. Christmas shopping had been a mix-up; she used her allowance money to get something for her grandpa and he gave her money to shop for Scott and Ororo because that had been his idea, anyway. But it was hard to find something affordable for her mom. Art might have been her life, but it wasn’t cheap.

Annie clicked on a link from a travel blog. It turned out what she wanted only barely existed, and even when it did, it was well outside her price range. The closest to what she could afford might have been a Fodor’s Guide to the Whole Damn World, which she was pretty sure didn’t exist at all.

Lost in her research, she did not notice someone else had arrived until she heard the front door unlock. Annie swore. She did not have time to run upstairs; instead she put the computer in ‘sleep’ mode and ducked into the closet. Okay, maybe it was a little ridiculous, but it beat being caught at her secret search!

To her surprise, however, as her mother muttered and paced—her preferred method of shaking off the cold—Annie heard the stairs squeak.

Oh, no, no, no…

“Daisy.”

Grandpa did not sound happy.

Still, she couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t sound distant, either. He sounded much more aware and engaged than he had in months talking to her.

“Dad.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Just out. Around. Can this wait? I’m exhausted.”

“Not this time, Daze. This needs to stop.”

Annie wasn’t supposed to hear this conversation. She felt that in her heart, and it hurt. Everyone was hurting, but there was something especially profane and painful in hearing this fight.

They had never exactly been a traditional family, but they loved each other. They used to love each other.

“I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.”

“And Annie? She gonna take care of herself, too?”

“Dad!”

“She’s in her room. She has her music on.”

That had been true when Grandpa checked on her twenty minutes ago. Now she was in the coat closet, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might puke. Didn’t they hear that?

“She’s thirteen, Daisy.”

“I know that!”

“She’s a child.”

“Don’t you see that’s why I can’t be around her right now?” Mom asked.

Annie bit back a sob, but felt her eyes welling up anyway. She was used to her mom disappearing for brief periods. Sometimes she would be working on a new project and too wrapped up to remember the outside world—that was how artists were. Sometimes their souls spun into a frenzy and all they could do was follow.

This was different. Her mom had been outright avoiding her, and that hurt.

“I can’t do this. She can’t see me this way!”

“It’s better than not seeing you at all!”

Annie raised her hands to cover her ears. It turned out to be a really bad mistake: her arms brushed against the coats, knocking them into empty hangers and making them rattle. She froze. Maybe… maybe… maybe nobody heard. Maybe they had stopped talking because they were just finished with their conversation.

Grandpa shattered that hope: “Annie?”

She said nothing. If she had a mutant power hanging around, this would be a great time for it to manifest. Teleportation would be great. Invisibility. The ability to shrink to the size of a dime.

Footsteps approached the coat closet.

Camouflage, that would be a useful mutant power.

The doorknob turned.

Shapeshifting. She could shift into the shape of a coat…

But the door opened, and none of that had happened. Annie was standing in the coat closet crying in plain view. Her mom stared at her for a moment, then turned away and covered her mouth. Grandpa reached out.

Annie bolted past him, down the hallway, until there was nowhere else to run and she slammed the door shut behind her. She sank down on the floor of the garage. It was freezing, almost literally freezing; the garage was unheated and the floor was plain concrete. She crouched, afraid if she sat down her butt would freeze to the ground.

“Annie?” her mom called, knocking on the door. “Annie, baby, come out.”

“Go away!”

“Come out and we can talk about this. I didn’t mean that like it sounded, come on back inside—”

“Go away, I hate you!” Annie meant every word. She wanted her mother to go away and, in that moment, she hated her. She had been mad at her mom before. When they had to move back in with her grandparents, she was mad. Hating her was new, though.

And she did.

And she wanted her to go away.

So why did it hurt so much when she heard her mother’s footsteps walking away?

It was an ugly, embarrassing scene in the garage. Annie blubbered until she was coughing, fingers wound so tightly in her hair she felt the circulation cutting off. She stayed crouched and rocking, trying to shake off the cold.

Annie had always known she was unplanned, that Daisy never really meant to be a mom. She hadn’t been like the other moms. It was in the way she dressed, her loose long hair and bare toes on the school lawn. Plenty of other moms didn’t wear wedding rings, but most of them had careers. Not Daisy. She was an artist. She was having a love affair with the world and Annie was swept along by the current.

Only, for the first time, she found herself wondering if she had not been only unplanned but unwanted.

The garage was really Grandpa’s space. He liked to tinker with engines, was the sort of man who actually enjoyed cleaning his car and refilling the windshield washer fluid. So when they put a phone in the garage, it was a joke between her grandparents that Grandma needed a way to catch his attention.

Annie picked it up for another reason. Of the three Summerses in this house, she knew for a fact that two had been intentional. Grandpa was a second child; Mom was on-purpose, Grandpa said so and Annie did not want any more details than that!

But they weren’t the world’s entire Summers supply, now, were they? She was still shaking and didn’t know the number. Luckily Grandpa believed in speed dial.

Other Scott’s cell phone was 7, and he picked up just as the third ring started.

“Hey, Alex.”

Hearing a young man call her grandpa that was weird. Scott was barely older than Annie, but he treated Grandpa like a peer. She got it—sort of—but it was still strange.

“It’s me.”

“Daisy?”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, trying to un-cry herself enough to make sense. “Annie.”

* * *

 

Later, after she had calmed down and the garage felt boring and her fingers were freezing, Annie unlocked the door and pushed it open. She crept ahead carefully.

“Nice try.”

Annie felt like hell. Her eyes and throat were raw from crying. Her toes and fingers hurt from the cold. She wanted to go to bed and hate everything until she fell asleep, and did not appreciate her grandpa ruining that plan.

“C’mon,” he said, sounding no more thrilled than she felt.

She didn’t want to, but she plunked on the couch next to him, anyway. She folded her arms over her chest. The shivering made the sulking less powerful.

“She never wanted me.”

“Annie…”

“Was she… was I…”

“What—Christ, no! Why would you think that?”

Annie shrugged. Because her mom didn’t want her.

“Daisy’s been having a hard time lately. She lost her mom.”

 _Yeah_ , Annie thought, _I know the feeling._

Apparently her grandpa saw the look on her face, because he said, “She was in her senior year of college. She was a little wild. She was taking the pill, but it only works effectively if it’s taken at the same time every day, and you know your mom. Sometimes she gets wrapped up in things.”

“Grandpa, ew!”

“She chose to keep you. No, she didn’t go to the party thinking she was going to get pregnant, but she had options. She could have gone to the clinic or left you at the fire station or left you here with us. Grandma and I would have raised you.”

“You’d still raise me, right?” Annie asked, suddenly thinking of something else. “Like if Mom… you know. If she weren’t around.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to your mom.”

“Okay, but when it does.”

It wasn’t a question, or a worry. She said it like something she had decided.


	5. Come Back

  
Christmas had never been very traditional for Annie.

Her mom was an artist. Brilliant, eccentric. Often doing wild things, like the two weeks she took Annie out of school, drove them both out to the beach. Annie had been in the height of her mermaid fascination at the time; one of her mom’s most popular collections consisted of the photos and paintings that came of that week.

Annie half-buried under a sand-sculpted mermaid body, pieces of foil and shell decorating her tail. Her mom shook her awake before dawn to start setting that one up, lit with an enthusiasm that Annie caught immediately. So what if it meant hours lying in the sand waiting for the sun to rise?

Annie emerging from her mermaid cocoon and running into the waves. The aesthetic was so perfect they did it again the next day, this time fixing her into a mermaid skirt instead of just her swimsuit under the sand so it danced and glittered around her as she ran for the waves.

Annie listening to a conch shell, her face lit up because she could hear the ocean, scales painted down her legs.

Annie with a mermaid tail made from an old blanket, shells woven into her hair, dragging herself into the tiny cottage they lived in for those weeks, because she said not all mermaids were happy.

Nobody understood being Daisy Summers’s daughter. She had been accused of using Annie like it was something ugly, something no one refuted louder than Annie herself. Two weeks her mom spent doing nothing but turning her into a series of mermaids, how was that mistreatment? They hadn’t understood.

Just like they hadn’t understood why Annie was allowed to draw on the walls and sometimes wore the same shirt to school for a week solid because she said it was the one she wanted and Daisy thought that was a fine way for a child to express herself.

So why should Christmas have been normal?

One year, instead of having a real tree, Daisy painted a behemoth of one in the corner of their apartment. She pounded nails into the wall so they could hang lights and ornaments. (By that time the security deposit was long gone.)

More than once, when they had a real tree, Daisy and Annie cuddled together on the fold-out couch to be close to its branches, to breathe in Christmas.

This year, snow was falling when Annie woke up. She watched it for a while, the blurry world outside through her blurry eyes. One leg had fallen over the side of the bed and felt just about frozen even though the heat was on. She rubbed it until feeling returned, then hauled herself out of bed.

She pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie and went to face the day.

Annie knew it was going to be the un-merriest Christmas she could imagine. It wasn’t so awful for her. She was used to spending Christmas with her mom, so it was sort of like any other Christmas. Grandpa was used to spending Christmas with Grandma. He wouldn’t be able to do that this year.

Annie took some papers from her desk and headed downstairs.

She had printed out the instructions last night, after googling recipes for beginners, then double-checking that she even understood all the terms. It turned out that making breakfast was complicated when you did more than toast a bagel.

The internet said baking eggs was a thing, though. It looked simple enough. She double-checked the instructions, then turned on the oven. She half expected it to explode or smell like gas that would lead to an explosion. Never mind that the oven was electric! But it just came to life with a click and a prolonged whir.

It wasn’t long before her grandpa joined her.

When Annie, Alex, and Daisy sat down to breakfast, it was almost passably like someone competent had been there to cook it! Not entirely, of course, but Annie’s oven-cooked eggs turned out edible, and there was microwave bacon and the Summers family specialty, toast. (Mostly un-burnt.)

Annie couldn’t relax. She knew what was coming. Once she and Grandpa started talking about it, they agreed that this would be the best and hardest thing.

“Annie and I have been talking,” Grandpa said. He slid an envelope across the table.

Daisy gave them each a wary look, then picked up the envelope. Inside was her real Christmas present. Annie hadn’t really helped—hadn’t really been able to help. But it had been her idea.

“Travel vouchers,” Daisy observed.

Open tickets weren’t an option anymore, but according to all the travel blogs, this was the next best thing.

“Mom, we don’t want you to go,” Annie jumped in. She hadn’t spoken to her mother since that night. Not really. “Not like that. We want you to experience. You were gonna travel, see the world, and you gave that up for me.”

“I never blamed you for that.”

“I know,” Annie assured her, and she did.

Until they moved back in here, she hadn’t even known. Not until she saw the Southern Hemisphere stars on her mom’s bedroom ceiling, the continents painted in glimpses on her walls. Once, Daisy was a young teenager dreaming of the places she would visit.

“I know, but you still lost out on an opportunity. If you want to take it now—I want you to take it now.”

She wanted it. That was clear in her expression, that was why she looked as conflicted as she did now, because she wanted to go, and Annie was staying.

They wanted to give her the thing she had always wanted, but, Annie realized, had not thought through the cruelty of the offer. Annie wasn’t going to travel. She was going to stay here, continue going to school, maybe make some new friends. She no longer blamed her mother for ripping her away from her old ones—that hadn’t been her fault.

She didn’t want her mom to leave her. That was just a side effect of going.

“Annie… I’ve always taken care of you…”

“You have,” Annie agreed, trying not to let herself start to cry. She would if she let herself. “You really have, Mom.”

She wasn’t a traditional mother. She was a mother who cared more about her daughter having an open mind than an A in composition, who stressed seeing the beauty in the world instead of the logic in math homework. Sometimes, Annie resented her for it. Sometimes she wanted a normal mom who drove a mini-van, who never disappeared into a studio, who knew from one month to the next where their finances would be. Had she sold some of her work, was it going to be a month of art house cinema trips and foreign restaurants? Or were they relying on her side jobs? Commissions and the occasional illustration gig paid for adventures. Daisy had been a part-time art teacher to cover the day-to-day. Annie had resented it, until she understood the life Daisy had once dreamed of, prepared for. That this was the only way she knew how to live a traditional lifestyle.

“This is what you need,” she explained. She wasn’t crying. The same could not be said of her mother. “I get it now, how much you gave up for me. This is what you need to be whole again. It’s okay, Mom.”

It was different for Annie.

She barely remembered Uncle Scott.

She hadn’t been the one to find Grandma.

But this was the house where half of her mom’s family died, and where she used to be someone else. She needed room to breathe. Annie knew better than anyone how stifling a routine became.

“We don’t want you to go, Daze,” Grandpa said, taking her hands. “We want you to come back.”


	6. Family

  
Some families went away for the holidays. Annie’s had never been one of those families. They had other holidays when they were together—she and Daisy would go to Grandma and Grandpa’s place for Thanksgiving, for Easter, for the Fourth of July, but not for Christmas. Somehow Christmas was the most family-centric holiday. Annie realized eventually that it had just been too hard after Uncle Scott died.

So a trip for the holidays was new and different, even if they were going to see people Annie had never exactly warmed to. Except Other Scott—she hadn’t so much liked him when they met. How could she? After Grandma died, Annie couldn’t imagine liking anything or anyone. The best she could say was that she appreciated him.

Annie had never been to Charles’s place before, but knew they were close when they drove through a pair of gates with an X in a circle.

“Hey, Grandpa.”

“Hm.”

“You were supposed to park two blocks away and have a serious talk about me being on my best behavior.”

He gave her a surprised look. “Your mom did that?”

“No, but you’re supposed to.”

“Tell you a funny story,” her grandpa said. “Charles had a visitor once—I forget who it was—and they left a pack of cigarettes behind. Scott immediately told him, so Charles puts the pack aside, says they’ll return it next time, tells Ororo and Scott not to touch it. I asked him why he did it. He said boundaries needed to be clear.”

As Grandpa parked the car, Annie asked, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

Grandpa looked at her. “No, it was stupid. Charles was parenting them both like they were Scott, but Scott was never going to touch the cigarettes anyway and Ororo might not have, but the minute he said it I knew she would. Ororo’s like me. So are you. I didn’t tell you to be on your best behavior because then you’d spit on the carpet. Come on. We’re here.”

The cold hit Annie the second she opened the door. It helped drown out her curiosity about how Grandpa would react if she actually did spit on the carpet, because a tiny part of her wondered if he had been daring her to do it.

“Holy shit. This is…”

“Yes,” Grandpa agreed. “And don’t cuss.”

“You cuss.”

He chuckled. “Not here I don’t.”

They made their way up to the giant megahouse that was apparently Charles’s home—Annie had not been prepared for that. She hesitated on the top step.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Yes. Now come on, it’s freezing out here.”

As if on cue, the wind blasted through and made her shiver, but Annie still pointed out, “He doesn’t like me.”

“You don’t trust him. Not the same thing.”

Despite that being completely unfair, it was not untrue. Annie took the final step towards the door as Grandpa knocked.

She would say this, at least: it was much warmer inside. Everyone was happy to see her grandpa. Annie hung back and watched him trading hugs with some people she recognized—Charles, Hank, Other Scott—and some people she didn’t—a white-haired girl and a woman around his age. He had never been particularly reserved, physically, but it was strange to see him so engaged, with a group so outgoing.

Annie scuffed her shoe on the mat. She didn’t know, like, and trust anyone here besides her grandpa, and maybe Other Scott. And she definitely wasn’t ready to hug Other Scott the way Grandpa did.

Everyone was talking at once: “So good to see you—”

“—missed you so much—”

“—been too long—”

Other Scott nudged the white-haired girl and led her over. “Hey Annie. It’s good to see you again.”

She shrugged.

“This is Ororo.”

Ororo stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Annie’s reaction must have shown because before she could gather her thoughts enough to take the handshake, Ororo pulled her hand back and said to Other Scott, “Okay, so she’s more like Alex than like you. This is going to be fun.”

Even though Other Scott was still wearing those red sunglasses, the way he tilted his head told Annie that he was rolling his eyes.

Annie stepped farther inside, off the mat, and gave a curious look when she could see into the living room. “You still have your tree up?”

“We wanted to have Christmas with you and Alex,” Ororo explained.

“So you just… didn’t have Christmas on Christmas?”

“Sure.”

Annie’s Christmases had always been strange, but they had always been Christmas. There was something special about the day, not because she was especially religious, just because—well, it was Christmas. Holidays were when they were, right?

There was no real reason Christmas needed to be on the 25th. Still, the fact that they decided to just change the date, just for her and Grandpa…

“Hey—you okay?” Other Scott asked.

Annie realized he was not the only one wondering. “Um… bathroom?”

“Turn right, it’s the third door on your left.”

“Thanks. All this happy and love is giving me hives,” Annie said, slipping past everyone.

Other Scott commented, not so much argument as misunderstanding, “Hives don’t make you need the bathroom.”

“I’m gonna puke then!” Annie called back, unable to stop the feeling that she had won the argument but lost her dignity. Really not as fair a trade as she thought it would be a moment ago.

She didn’t puke, but settled for locking herself in the bathroom for a while. Being locked in the bathroom quickly became remarkably boring. She hadn’t brought a book with her, which left her very little to do. She used the toilet out of sheer boredom.

It wasn’t like she grew up without love. Her mom loved her, and her grandparents did. No, it wasn’t that, it was the sudden, overwhelming sense that she had come to a strange place in which Grandpa belonged but she did not. She had suddenly and harshly felt that she was on the outside.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed before someone knocked on the door.

“Annie? You okay?”

That was not who she expected.

“Why are you here?”

The mildly surprised answer: “I live here.”

“Why are you talking to me instead of my grandpa?”

“Um…”

She had been borderline curious. Now that Other Scott didn’t want to answer, she had to know.

“Well?”

“Alex and Professor Xavier said to give you time,” he admitted. “Annie? You know almost everybody here. You know me, Hank, and Charles. We’re not strangers, not completely.”

Annie considered that for a moment. “All the guys,” she realized.

“Yeah. There’s not as many women in my life as I’d like.”

She snickered.

“That’s not what I mean!”

That only made Annie laugh harder.

After a few moments, Other Scott asked, “Ready to come out? We’re having dinner in a few minutes.”

Annie sighed and unlocked the door.

Her grandparents’ house had a dinner table—of course it did—but not a full-on dining room. Charles had one in his castle.

“You’re here,” Other Scott said.

“Assigned seating? Really?” Annie asked, unable to keep from glancing down at her clothes. The jeans and sweatshirt had been fine for the car; they were not exactly up to a fancy dining room. She weighed that against Other Scott—khakis and a polo—but Ororo wasn’t dressed so differently.

“It’s not really assigned. Just habits.”

“You assigned me a habit?”

“Uh… yes. I guess we did.”

Annie didn’t think she could escape this, so she dropped into the seat. Besides, dinner actually sounded appealing.

“You have not had pizza until you’ve had Ruth’s pizza,” Grandpa said, taking a seat beside Annie. “That’s Ruth,” he added, indicating.

The pizza was as good as advertised, but that was nothing compared with the conversation. Annie wasn’t part of a big family, but she understood why this was appealing. Sometimes it felt like everyone was talking at once, speaking their own language that was half English, half inside jokes.

She did learn some things, though. She learned that Other Scott and Ororo had just finished their first semester at community college and Ororo liked history and anthropology, and both had good grades. (And that was important in their family, which Annie could have guessed.) She learned that Hank and Ruth were visiting (which she sort of knew anyway) and that Charles wanted to open a school for mutants (which he had apparently done before).

She wasn’t the only person not speaking, though. Next to her, she noticed that Other Scott was quiet.

During a lull in the conversation, Charles prompted, “Scott, you should tell Alex about your paper.”

“Oh, I don’t—it wasn’t… it’s not a big deal.”

“What paper?” Alex asked.

“An analysis for school. My midterm. A bunch of schools in the area put together a literature review and they included my paper,” Other Scott explained. Solar eclipse: Annie did not want to look right at him, but was fascinated by the mix of embarrassment and pride on his face.

“Which was about what?” Ruth prompted.

“Romeo and Juliet. Basically, my thesis was, they’re not in love so much as they’re being driven away from their families and they’re bonded by this shared sense of isolation. Romeo’s older and expected to behave like an adult already, but what kicks off the whole story is the nurse and Lady Capulet deciding Juliet’s ready to marry. Even then, Lady Capulet has no idea how old her daughter is. I don’t dispute that there’s a romance, just that it’s not about… romance. It’s about belonging, with romance as a vehicle.”

“It was a very persuasive argument,” Charles said.

“Looking at generations of interpretation and saying, bite me?” Grandpa said. He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “I’ve never been prouder of my baby brother.”


	7. Christmas on New Year

  
The rest of the evening was uneventful. Annie mostly kept to herself, just watching, especially once the group began going their separate ways. She saw that Grandpa wanted to stay with other adults, a group with which Annie did not belong. Ororo and Other Scott went into the kitchen with Ruth to wash dishes. Annie would have called that sexist, except that she understood it was more like a ritual from the way they talked. She couldn’t make out the words, just the tones of Other Scott, Ororo, and Ruth chatting softly.

“Annie.”

She glanced over at Charles. “Hm?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m good. I was just gonna go to bed.”

Immediately after arriving, Annie had hidden herself in the bathroom. Grandpa showed her where she would be sleeping. It didn’t look like a hotel room. It looked like a room in an old, old, old residence that was a museum now. Once she and her mom went to California and took a tour of Hearst Castle. This reminded her of Hearst Castle.

So bouncing on the bed was super fun, not just because it was bouncing but because it felt like breaking a rule.

When she did settle down, she had a hard time falling asleep. A lot was swirling through her head. She missed her grandma and she missed her mom. She wasn’t sorry they suggested Mom go traveling, and she wasn’t unhappy—not to be living with Grandpa, not to be here.

Besides, what about when her mom came back? If she left, Grandpa would be alone.

Annie sighed and pulled the pillow over her head.

* * *

 

The next morning, Annie followed her nose. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Didn’t, really. The first day Hank and Other Scott were visiting, she woke up to the smell of pancakes then, too.

She found Other Scott and Ruth in the kitchen. Other Scott, as expected, was frying pancakes.

“Good morning, Annie.”

“Hi,” she told Ruth, not sure why her voice sounded small all of the sudden.

“Hey, Annie!”

“Hey.”

“Oh my god, you suck at Christmas!” Ororo cried, flinging herself into the kitchen.

She and Annie had made similar fashion choices: fuzzy pajama pants and sweatshirts. Other Scott seemed to have been up for a while. His hair was carefully combed, still wet from the shower. His shirt had a collar and although Annie had only seen him from the back, she knew it had buttons, too. For pity’s sake it was tucked in like he was going to church.

But he wasn’t. He was trading gibes with his sister.

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Like you’d even know!” Other Scott said.

“Ororo,” Ruth said, “go and help Hank set the table.”

Ororo huffed, but went, calling behind her, “And I do so know!”

Annie leaned on the door jamb. “Can I help?” she asked, assuming the answer would be no. She was useless at cooking.

“Melt butter for the eggs,” Ruth told her.

“Huh?”

“Hang on,” Other Scott said. He flipped his pancakes, then stepped away to grab a giant pan, which he offered with the explanation, “There’s butter in the fridge. The stove’s a little funny, I’ll help you there.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Annie said, trying not to stare at his lip. It hadn’t been split yesterday and the scab was unnervingly fresh.

Other Scott winced. “That obvious?” he asked.

“Hey, Hank says we need… more…” Ororo trailed off. “The Professor’s gonna kill you!”

“It’s Christmas, I’ll be back in three days,” Other Scott replied.

“That’s Easter. You know that’s Easter.”

“Annie, melt the butter,” Ruth said, snapping them out of their sniping detente.

As she did, she glanced at Other Scott’s handiwork. That was more pancakes than she had ever seen in her life. Not in one place—in her life, entirely.

“That’s a lot of pancakes.”

“There are seven of us,” Other Scott said.

“Still…”

“Three are teenagers,” Ruth added.

Which was the end of the arguments.

Ororo wasn’t wrong.

Other Scott had his head tilted when everyone sat down to breakfast, but that only made obvious that he was trying to hide something. Even Annie could tell. Charles took one look at Other Scott, and Annie found herself utterly fascinated.

Grandpa didn’t talk much about his childhood. Somewhere in the midwest, Annie had a great-aunt Haley who she’d never met. Somewhere in outer space, her great-grandpa was Han Solo. But when Grandpa talked about growing up, he always said it was Charles who saved him, who brought him back when he was lost.

And that interested Annie, because from what Grandpa said, he had been pretty far gone. He would talk vaguely about limits and boundaries, and as someone who had grown up without much of that, Annie was curious as to what it looked like in practice. She didn’t know what the freshly split lip meant, only that Other Scott had been doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

Fight?

She couldn’t picture him fighting.

Charles just said, “We’ll talk later.”

With that breakfast was underway. Just like dinner last night, it was full of chatter and good food. Annie couldn’t remember the last time—before last night—she’d eaten a real, home-cooked meal. They did their best, but both she and Grandpa had bad luck in the kitchen. A few weeks ago, Annie had set a bag of microwave popcorn on fire. She hadn’t touched the microwave since.

The incident embarrassed her to that day, mostly because Grandpa was recounting it.

“Hey, I’m learning!” Annie objected. “I was helping Ruth and Oth—and Scott.”

Clearly the slip had been noticed. Rather than let it pass, Grandpa said, “She calls him Other Scott.”

“Grandpa!” Annie yelped.

The adults found this funny, but she noticed Ororo and Other Scott determinedly not laughing—and she appreciated it. She felt a brief feeling of camaraderie, a sense that even though the only person she really knew here was Grandpa, she and Scott and Ororo were on the same side. Ororo opened her mouth, but Scott whispered, “Later!” and that did the trick.

* * *

 

Unfortunately that only made her more uneasy later, when they clustered around the tree, trading presents.

Annie really wanted Scott and Ororo to like her now, and that was hard—because she had barely known them when she picked the presents. She did it because Grandpa wanted her to. She held her breath while Ororo tore the paper off and—

“Yes!” she yelped. “They’re perfect! Thanks!”

“What is it?” Scott asked, leaning closer. Then, “Oh, you traitors!”

Taking the two water pistols out of the packaging, Ororo said, “Look, they even come with a little badge.”

“Does it say ‘professional cockblock’?” Scott grumbled.

Not softly enough.

“Scott!” Charles chided. “Language.”

At the same time, Grandpa said, “Is that what this was about?”

“It’s an expression, Professor, people say that now.”

“People may, but I expect better from you.”

“I won’t say it again. Sorry, Professor.”

“That’s all right.”

Ororo aimed a water pistol at Scott and pulled the trigger. It was dry, but her point was made.

He balled up wrapping paper and threw it at her.

The adult sighed, Scott and Ororo laughed, and Annie found herself smiling like she was a part of things, though she wasn’t sure if she was.

“Hey, this—”

“Don’t!”

Scott had picked up the gift Annie gave him, but she grabbed it back.

She had given him a quartet of novels she liked. It seemed like a good idea until she found out he had published a re-interpretation of Romeo and Juliet in his school’s literature review. And seen him unwrap a set of Pulitzer Prize winners. And until she heard Scott and Hank address each other in Elvish.

“Just… don’t. C’mon like you need another Christmas present.”

“I don’t, but it’s from you.” He said that like it meant something.

Annie glanced between him and the gifts, aware that everyone else seemed to be doing the same. She didn’t know how to defuse the situation.

“Hey.”

Scott motioned her nearer. Annie leaned close enough for him to whisper a suggestion.

“May I open it later? Alone?”

Annie hesitated. The thing was, she believed him. She believed he wanted this not because it was a present, but because it was from her.

She handed it to him.

“Anyone up for a snowball fight?” Ororo asked, breaking the awkward quiet.

“After we clean up,” Scott added.

“You can clean up later, Scott,” Charles said. “Go on.”

“I need my—”

“After you get your mittens,” he agreed.

“Girls against boy!” Ororo cried, scrambling from the room.

“Summers against Munroe!” Scott returned, not far behind.

Annie looked to Grandpa, who smiled and gave her a ‘go ahead’ expression. She grinned.


	8. Tea

 

With the kids playing outside in the snow, Alex, Charles, Hank, and Ruth settled together in the sitting room. Charles poured the tea and Alex raised an eyebrow at Ruth’s generous addition of whiskey to her cup. But it was Ruth. He wasn’t surprised.

Back in the 1960s, Alex had not been a part of this group. Over the years, as he had grown up, he had started to feel like a peer to Charles and Hank. Ruth had not been there, however. She distanced herself from them after losing Ororo and Scott. This was new.

It was good.

“Annie seems to be doing better,” Charles observed.

“She hates you,” Ruth said, meaning Charles. She did not know Annie well, had never met her before, but Annie's discomfort with Charles had apparently been obvious.

Alex objected: “She doesn’t hate him, she just doesn’t know him.”

“Maybe Annie has a low-level psychic perception,” Hank theorized. He had long since given up on trying to study his friends’ DNA—Alex had never been comfortable with the idea, not when it was his DNA and his brother’s, his son’s, his daughter’s, so there was really no reason to even suggest it with Annie. Nonetheless, “Charles’s telepathy is unsettling. No offense.”

“None taken, my friend,” Charles assured him. He knew perfectly well what his telepathy was capable of. What he was capable of.

“Annie’s always been prickly,” Alex said. “Anyway, she doesn’t know you well. You’re still in the first impressions stage. She’ll come around. You don’t have a spare of that literature review, do you?”

“I’ll mail you a copy.”

Ruth cleared her throat.

Charles amended his statement, “I’ll mail you both copies. They were both on the dean’s list, of course. Ororo always liked to prove she could take on any challenge, but Scott… sometimes I think he’s doing it to prove himself to me.”

“I don’t think so,” Hank replied, “back then he was mostly concerned with your affection. He didn’t think he was smart, he had no reason to want to be seen that way.”

Charles sighed. It was clear this had been weighing on him.

Alex had been on the outside at the time, younger and less directed; it was Hank and Ruth to whom Charles turned for advice. So it was Alex surprised to realize: “You thought Scott was dumb?”

“He couldn’t do math, that was all I knew to value. I’m ashamed of it now,” Charles added, seeing the objection brewing. Alex might be old enough to be Scott’s grandfather, but he still saw himself as Scott’s big brother. A wise man would not meddle with Alexander Cole Summers’s little brother.

“Couldn’t do math?” Alex repeated.

“Scott’s always been that way, he has a difficult time with abstract thinking. It doesn’t mean he’s dumb, Alex. It’s simply how his mind works. One day, when it won’t damage his confidence, I will explain that he made me a better person. When Scott first came here, it wasn’t his fear, it was the academic struggles. It took me far longer than it should have to understand how special he is and how little algebra truly matters, but hearing it now—he won’t understand. It would break his heart. And then you would have to kill me and who would take care of Scott and Ororo?”

“I would,” Hank replied. “Alex, blast him back to the Cretaceous.”

After the laughter had died down, Alex poured himself a second cup of tea as he asked, “What do you do for Ororo and female problems?”

No one doubted why he was asking. Annie still had a mom, but it was clear who she trusted, who she would stay with, and Daisy wasn’t going to be around all the time. Alex would raise her. That had never been in question. But there were things he wouldn’t even know to anticipate, let alone how to address.

“She has Ruth. Jean helps, as well,” Charles said, “she’s become a sister to Ororo and you know young people today are much worldlier than they used to be.” Jean was only a year older, but already understood things about her body in a way Ororo had not been prepared for—not to mention the fact that bras, makeup, and dating were very different matters in the 1960s!

They both knew it was less helpful than Alex had hoped.

“Jean—she’s good enough?” he asked, and everyone understood the implied end of the sentence: for Scott.

“She is,” Charles confirmed, “though I imagine you’d prefer to see for yourself.”

Ruth reasoned, “Then the answer is clear, for Scott and for Annie, you must spend more time here.”

“Only if you do,” Charles observed, taking her hand.

“This is true.”

Changing the subject, Alex asked, “How’s the new academy looking?”

“It’s still the plan,” Charles said, “when Scott and Ororo are ready. I know he’ll do well, though I can only hope Ororo reacts to having new students as we would hope. I’m not worried about Scott. I’ve seen him with Artie, with Ororo for that matter, but I don’t know…”

Hank suggested, “Scott is vulnerable when someone makes him feel safe. Ororo makes her own safety, we believe—I believe—she will show another side when she has someone to help.”

“You’re training them, aren’t you?” Alex asked.

It was the only logical answer to Scott’s split lip. He and Ororo fought sometimes, sure, but she would give him an elbow to the ribs, not a punch in the face. As soon as Charles saw the injury, he seemed to know what it was. Scott being in a fight would have raised questions. The likeliest answer was the Danger Room.

Charles nodded. “You know Erik won’t stay quiet forever. We all know.”

The nods and expressions in return told him that, yes, they all knew.

“Before, Ororo and Scott wanted to be X-Men more than anything, but I don’t want this rushed. We only had a week before the missile crisis. We could have been stronger, more prepared. And they’re still young. One day, when they’re ready, they will be X-Men.”

 


	9. Mae

  
The day before Annie and Grandpa were planning to leave, Scott mentioned in the middle of breakfast, “Ororo says it’s not going to snow or rain today, I’d like to go see Mae.”

Charles nodded. “That’s fine.”

“Can I come?” Annie asked.

Scott explained what visiting Mae entailed. It didn’t dissuade Annie, so a little while later they pulled on coats, scarves, mittens, and hats, and made their way outside. Snow crunched under their boots and the cold nipped at their cheeks. Annie pulled her hat lower over her ears.

Once they were solidly out of earshot of the mansion, Annie asked, “Who’s Mae?”

“She was the local librarian back in the ’60s.”

“Same library?”

Scott nodded.

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a page.”

Annie laughed, her breath leaving clouds in the air. She thought it was a joke—a page in the library, like a page in the book. When Scott didn’t respond, she asked, “That’s a real thing?”

He nodded again.

“What’s it mean? What do you do?”

“Put books on the shelves and shelf-read. It’s where I look at the Dewey number for each book on the shelf and make sure they’re in order.”

“That sounds boring.”

Scott admitted, “Sometimes it is, but when you go to the library, how do you look for things?”

Annie didn’t go to the library as much as she thought she should. Not that she normally thought about it—but libraries were good places to go and she rarely did. She didn’t want to admit that, so instead said, “On the shelves.”

“Well, exactly! If the books are out of order, patrons can’t find what they’re looking for. It’s not a particularly exciting job, but it’s necessary to keep the library running smoothly.”

She was beginning to realize that the walk into town was farther than she had expected. Maybe it would have felt shorter in better weather. She shifted awkwardly.

And this was just a walk! She couldn’t imagine reading book numbers for hours on end.

“My grandpa thinks about you a lot,” she said. “I never thought about him as a kid, you know? I just pictured him as this Tom Sawyer type.”

“Huck Finn.”

“Didn’t Huck Finn, like, skip school and run away? That doesn’t sound like Grandpa.”

Scott chuckled.

“Seriously?”

He nodded.

“So were you Tom?”

Scott thought for a moment. He was just Scott now, Annie realized, not Other Scott anymore.

“Grandpa doesn’t really talk about when you were kids. Maybe you can tell me more about what he was like?” she asked hopefully.

Scott didn’t know what to say, so he tried to think of what Alex would want him to say. Alex loved Annie, there was no question about it, but how did he feel about their pasts? Did he not want to talk about it or not want Annie to hear?

Professor Xavier didn’t always tell everyone everything, but Scott and Ororo didn’t keep secrets from one another.

“Me and Alex didn’t grow up together.”

“Seriously?”

Scott nodded. “He was adopted. I grew up in an orphanage until Professor Xavier found me.”

He knew it wasn’t fully accurate. Annie probably thought Xavier had adopted Scott right out of the orphanage, and Scott accepted her believing that. There were things he wasn’t ready to tell, settling for a lie of omission.

They walked for what felt a little long even to Scott. He was none too shabby, but the cold made each step so much more tiring. Scott didn’t mind, though he kept an eye on Annie. He wasn’t sure what to do if she got tired, especially once they passed halfway. They paused in town. Scott bought a rose, and a hot chocolate for Annie, who had been a good sport.

It was more than Scott expected that Annie made it to Mae’s without complaining. He had almost expected her to hang back, but wasn’t surprised either when she did no such thing.

“Hey, Mae.”

Scott took a deep breath. He looked away, down at his fingers turning the rose and his toes scuffing up the ground, and tried to put words together.

“It’s been a while,” he explained to Annie.

She nodded, giving a surprisingly encouraging smile.

“I, um… I was in my school’s lit review,” he managed, then chuckled. “I thought you would’ve been proud of that. This is Annie. She’s my great-niece. My brother Alex’s granddaughter. I don’t know if you ever met Alex, but—well he’s doing a lot better now.”

He talked for a long time, filling her in on the past few months, telling her about the books he gave his sister for Christmas and how he wished Mae had been able to help him, but he remembered the first book Ororo didn’t hate. It had come from Mae—Kon-Tiki.

But it was cold, and eventually Annie started to fidget and stomp her feet for warmth.

“Okay, Annie. We can head back.”

Mae had been older in the 1960s, old enough to be a grandmother. She had given Scott her granddaughter’s hooded sweater once when he was embarrassed about his new haircut.

Scott had known, even before he was told, and maybe it was pointless, but Mae had been important to him when he was young. He left the rose on her tombstone. Annie put a hand on his shoulder as they left the cemetery. It was awkward—he felt the uncertainty in her touch—but Scott still appreciated the effort.

He took a few minutes to put his thoughts together. Annie was patient during that time, even as the shivers worsened.

“Hey… you see that tree there, the big pine?”

Annie looked ahead. She nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’ll race you to it.”

“What?”

“Ready?” Scott asked.

“Wh—”

He started to run, knowing it would make Annie run with him.

Scott kept that up on the way home. When they reached the mansion, both were sweaty and out of breath, but neither was cold.

 


	10. Civil Disobedience

  
Four months later, Annie vandalized a desk at school. There was a massive overreaction, of course. Like she made such a difference, and like they cared about the desks? This one was already covered in Sharpie.

Her art teacher sent her to the office, where one of the secretaries told her, “Sit there and wait for your parents.”

“Be a pretty long fucking wait,” Annie replied.

At which point several administrators started lecturing her at once. She couldn’t make out their words and didn’t care about their opinions; she just rolled her eyes and slouched on the bench. The problem was that she already felt crammed up, the way she had when she started scratching at the desk.

Sometimes, when everything was too much and she felt herself approaching boiling point, Annie wondered if her mutation would manifest. It hadn’t yet. She believed she had one, though. She had to. How could everyone else in her life be a mutant, and Annie be left an outsider?

The lunch bell rang while Annie was in the office. She took out her lunch bag.

“You can’t eat in here,” someone told her.

“I could go outside then.”

“No.”

Annie remembered when Scott explained why he would say ‘may I’ to ask for permission. It was important, he said, because you should rarely ask someone else what you were able to do—doctors, and that was about it. Asking for permission was different.

Annie jammed a corner of her sandwich into her mouth and found that, in fact, she could eat in the office.

“I said you can’t eat in here.”

But they weren’t going to enforce that, because it would have meant physically removing her sandwich.

Annie didn’t know why she picked these fights sometimes. It just made sense. Clearly, these people were idiots, and they were mean idiots tossing around the scraps of power they had, and she hated them. She knew she couldn’t change anything, but elected futile rebellion instead of acquiescence.

When Grandpa showed up, the first thing he did was ask Annie if she was okay.

That was why she trusted him, she thought. He wasn’t like those adults. He hadn’t forgotten that he had been a teenager once, too, and he had been a person with thoughts and feelings, not a drone.

The dean sat down with them both and explained to Grandpa: “Annie was caught vandalizing school property. She’s been drawing explicit images on the desks—”

“That’s bullshit!” Annie cried. “I didn’t draw anything explicit. I drew a rocket ship.”

Grandpa raised an eyebrow at her. He knew when she wasn’t telling the whole story.

“The explicit part was already there,” she admitted. “I just turned it into a rocket ship.”

“Why a rocket ship?” Grandpa asked.

“The shape was basically right…”

There was a twitch, just a hint of a half-smile, and it was enough to make Annie snicker and duck her head. She wasn’t in this alone.

The dean cleared his throat. “We seem to be wandering from the point.”

“Annie drew on the desk,” Grandpa summarized.

“Yes. And vandalism—”

“It sounds like other people have been drawing on the desks as well.”

“Well—yes, and if we knew who—”

“I’m guessing not Annie.”

“I don’t draw penises on stuff!” she cried. “That’s the boys! And it’s gross! I’m not apologizing for turning it into a rocket ship. Better than how it was.”

The rest of the meeting was clear enough. The dean hadn’t expected Grandpa to take Annie’s side, and she hadn’t felt this settled in a while. It wasn’t enough to keep her from being suspended, but she didn’t care about that. Anyone who had ever stepped foot in a high school knew there was nothing better than stepping foot back out.

Grandpa did argue her out of having to either pay for or clean the desk, though, saying that unless the school planned to replace every ‘decorated’ desk in the place, they could explain why they were singling out a girl but overlooking the boys doing it. She had almost thought Grandpa would punch him when the dean said that ‘boys will be boys’.

So she was surprised when, as they were driving home, he asked, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Annie was too surprised to be rude. “I thought you were on my side!”

“You vandalized school property, Annie.”

“It was already vandalized! I just… I mean I didn’t start it, I wasn’t the first person… it’s gross!”

“Yeah, it is. You vandalized school property!”

She sighed, thumped back in her seat, and crossed her arms over her chest. She stared out the window and refused to acknowledge him the rest of the drive home. Even though he supported her in front of the dean, he had turned out not to be on her side once they left. To Annie, it was almost worse. Why couldn’t he have just been honest if he was so bothered by her being a “vandal”?

When they reached home, Annie stormed up to her room and shut the door.

She seethed for a while. Then she ripped through her desk, looking for anything she might have left behind when she cleared out her pot last summer. By now she could hear Grandpa downstairs. He was on the phone. Complaining about her? Calling her mom?

Annie kicked at the floor.

She hoped her mom came for her.

She hoped her mom didn’t.

Annie sulked for several hours. After a while, Grandpa called up the stairs: “Annie, come on down for dinner.”

She didn’t.

Grandpa let her sulk the evening away, but he came up to her room after a while. He knocked, but Annie didn’t answer. So he let himself in.

“Annie, we need to talk, kid.”

Annie was lying on her bed, reading but pretending not to notice him.

“I understand why you did it. And I’m not mad at you, but I still have to work this week and I can’t leave you home by yourself. So… I’ll drive you to the bus station tomorrow, you’re staying with Charles for a week.”

Annie thought about that for a moment. She’d enjoyed the time she spent with Scott and Ororo over the holidays, and had looked forward to seeing them again. But she couldn’t let on that she was happy, so she just shrugged.

* * *

 

The following day, Annie climbed down from the bus, feeling frazzled, statically charged, and a little motion sick. Not that she was complaining. The bus had free wi-fi, so, it wasn’t totally the Dark Ages.

She looked around her as she waited for the bus driver to unlock the cargo storage under the bus. This was… unimpressive. She was real close by to a multi-story parking lot, and only a few tall buildings dotted the skyline.

The cargo storage door squealed open.

Annie swooped in as soon as her roller bag hit the ground, spotting it easily thanks to the 9 3/4 tag.

She looked around again, this time at the few people waiting for someone to pick them up. The first two legs of her trip had been fine: Grandpa dropping her at the bus station, the bus dropping her here. Now to complete this weirdo three-legged monstrosity…

Charles wasn’t there.

Scott was.

Standing beside him was a redhead who leaned over to whisper something. Scott nodded.

“Annie!”

They both came over. Scott hugged her, and Annie melted into the hug. She had been a little nervous—Scott could be great, but he also kind of had a stick up his ass. Vandalizing desks seemed like something he wouldn’t approve of.

“Hey, Scott. Good to see you.”

“You, too. This is Jean.”

“Hi!”

Jean offered her hand, and Annie shook.

“So are you two…?”

“Annie!”

But Jean just laughed. “Totally,” she said.

“I got lucky.”

“Scott!” Jean said. “That’s a euphemism.”

“No it isn’t. Is it?”

Annie giggled. “Hey, this isn’t the actual city, is it? This is kind of…”

“Please,” Jean replied. Apparently that was a no.

Scott added: “This is White Plains, not the big city.”

Across the lot, someone laid on a car horn. The three of them turned to see Ororo, kneeling on the passenger’s seat, one hand on the open window. “C’mon!” she called. “Let’s fly, bitches!”

Jean rolled her eyes, but the three of them headed for the car.

Scott opened the passenger side door. “Hey, budge. Guest rides shotgun.”

“You know why she’s here, right?” Ororo retorted.

“I’m bigger than you.”

Ororo gave him the finger, but she hopped out of the front seat.

“I can sit in the back,” Annie offered.

Scott bundled Ororo into the backseat before she could object, adding, “And I'm telling Professor Xavier you said 'bitches'.”

“So did you!”

Annie knew who they would have been at her school. They wouldn’t have been the cool kids, but they would have been envied because they were so close and comfortable with each other. Not because they were cool, because they couldn’t have cared any less. She didn’t have a lot of friends at school, but she could feel the friendship ricocheting between them. She leaned back in her seat, enjoying the feeling like she was part of their gang.

“By the way,” Ororo said, leaning forward, “me and Jean—well, we’re not condoning what you did—”

“We’re not allowed to condone it,” Jean added.

“Professor Xavier felt that their overt approval might unduly influence you, although he doesn’t wholly oppose a little civil disobedience,” Scott added.

“Professor Xavier isn’t worried about his approval,” Ororo added. “But…”

She held something out. Annie looked over. They had wrapped it in ribbon and tied it up with a bow, but she still clearly saw what it was. Color options, sparkles, neon: more Sharpies than she could have dreamed.


	11. Summer

  
That wasn’t the only trip. Annie didn’t always need to be suspended for a visit, either.

There was the four-day weekend Grandpa spent at a conference.

There was the trip so short Annie shoved her belongings in a backpack, and took a moment to realize the dude in the leather jacket was actually her nerdy great-uncle come to pick her up on a motorcycle. Awkward trip, that, she had to contend with how cool someone could seem while remaining the same sweet, dorky Scott.

There was that month-long trip over the summer. Charles said he wasn’t comfortable with Annie spending a month with nothing to do, and she wasn’t thrilled about hanging out with him either, so she agreed to volunteer at the library. Jean volunteered there, Scott worked there, and there was air conditioning.

“My niece, Annie,” Scott explained, standing next to her in the librarian’s office. “My brother’s a lot older than I am.”

“Okay! It’s nice to meet you, Annie. Grab a summer reading t-shirt. Scott’s going to show you around, okay?”

Annie smiled and nodded. “I’m really happy to be here.”

That may have been an exaggeration, but she was glad to have something to do.

She was less glad when she learned what that something was. Scott showed her to a room full of bookshelves. Apparently when books were returned, they came back here. Then pages—like Scott—sorted them by sections, loaded them up on carts, and put them back on shelves out in the library. Lather rinse repeat.

“We’ll start with picture books,” Scott said. When he turned around she mimed punching him in the head, which made another volunteer smirk.

It was a lot of fun, really. Even though the work was boring, Annie found herself getting to know the other volunteers.

The best times were with Scott, Jean, and Ororo though. They would hang out in town or at home. The girls would half-help and half-annoy Scott when he was cooking; he did seem to be the only one who cooked, which explained the presence of so many takeout menus. They all fought over the TV. Charles easily could have had multiple TVs in his home, but there was something comfortable about the way they all argued for control of the remote.

Being at the mansion for a long time made Annie increasingly aware that, sometimes, the three of them disappeared somewhere. It would be all of them at once, or one or two, without explanation.

She waited until she had Scott alone. She was ‘helping’ in the kitchen, which mostly meant handing him things.

“Where are Jean and Ororo?”

“They’re training,” Scott explained, “using their powers.”

“You all do that a lot.”

He shrugged. “I guess. We have to be able to control it, otherwise people can get hurt.”

“What’s it like?”

“Training.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, a lot of it is about using our powers, but also about learning to make decisions under pressure. Sometimes we don’t even use our powers.”

“Really?”

“Yes, because we need to be comfortable using our powers but we shouldn’t rely on them.”

“So… someone like me could do it? If you don’t always use your powers?”

Scott hadn’t expected that, but after a moment he agreed: “I guess so.”

* * *

 

One afternoon, Jean was staying with her parents and Scott was at work, leaving Annie and Ororo at home. Annie realized she hadn’t spent much time alone with Ororo. It wasn’t that she had avoided the older girl, just that someone was always around.

Ororo suggested swimming. Since it was July in New York, Annie pulled on her suit and followed Ororo. Turned out there was a pond on the grounds, deep enough that you probably wouldn’t feel the muck on the bottom. Probably.

The water gave them an escape from the muggy heat, and after a while they floated on their backs, arms linked, eyes gently closed against the sun.

“Do you miss your mom?”

Annie shrugged, sending tiny ripples into the pond. She had wanted to ask Ororo the same thing, and since the door was open: “Do you?”

“Yeah, but I’ll see her again… maybe Christmas or Scott’s birthday.”

Annie was surprised that Ororo, time-travel-from-1960s Ororo, would see her mom so often.

Then she realized: “You mean Ruth?”

“Ruth is my mom. My biological mother died when I was five. I barely remember her. I only got… a year, maybe two with Ruth, but she raised me so she’s my mom. It’s okay if you don’t miss your mom.”

Annie’s eyes popped open in surprise. She flinched and closed them again, seeing echoes of the sun against her eyelids.

“She did her best.”

“Not always good enough though, is it?”

Annie realized that her top half felt warm, but her bottom half was more than a little bit cold. She supposed her middle was warm and wondered about rolling like an alligator to chill herself evenly.

When they got out of the pond, Annie realized she had forgotten a towel.

Ororo shrugged. “We’re five minutes away and not going anywhere public,” she reasoned, so they walked back to the mansion, Annie in her soaked swimsuit and Ororo wrapped in her towel.

“Wait out here. I’ll grab you a towel,” Ororo said, leaving Annie outside.

Annie nodded, but ignored the directive. She could not help but wonder how big the place was. It was a show Scott liked to watch, one of the characters saying—A footprint doesn’t look like a boot. She wondered about the mansion’s footprint, and wandered around, following its perimeter.

When she heard Charles’s voice, she did not stop.

“…certain that’s a good idea.”

“Professor,” Scott replied, “you know we don’t always use our powers, we have some scenarios that would be acceptable.”

They were talking about training, she realized.

“That’s true, but it’s not something Annie needs to be involved in.”

…and her. She had asked, so Scott followed through.

“I don’t think it would hurt. She wants to. Professor, she could be—she might have powers.”

“Indeed she might. But—you know the problem here, Scott.”

There was a moment’s quiet.

Then, “I would explain the risk to her.”

“And.”

More softly, “And Alex. I would ask Alex’s permission.”

“Scott, look at me. You didn’t think this through. That’s all right. If Annie is—”

“Annie?”

The latest came not from Charles and Scott, but Ororo. She must have returned with the towel to find Annie missing, and Annie had snooped everything she needed to snoop. She hurried away toward Ororo and a chance to get out of her wet swimsuit, which was starting to chafe.

That summer, Annie enjoyed her time at the mansion. She felt accepted by the girls and like family to Scott, and her time at the library was… well, it was fine. She decided she would rather work somewhere else. Maybe a coffee shop.

The question hung over her head, though.

Everyone around her was a mutant.

Annie knew most people didn’t think particularly well of mutants, but most people’s families weren’t full of them. She was beginning to feel like everyone who mattered to her was a mutant.

Was she?


End file.
